River Town

Author: Peter Hessler
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062028987
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 382

Book Description
A New York Times Notable book, this memoir by a journalist who lived in a small city in China is “a vivid and touching tribute to a place and its people” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review). In the heart of China's Sichuan province, amid the terraced hills of the Yangtze River valley, lies the remote town of Fuling. Like many other small cities in this ever-evolving country, Fuling is heading down a new path of change and growth, which came into remarkably sharp focus when Peter Hessler arrived as a Peace Corps volunteer, marking the first time in more than half a century that the city had an American resident. Hessler taught English and American literature at the local college, but it was his students who taught him about the complex processes of understanding that take place when one is immersed in a radically different society. Poignant, thoughtful, funny, and enormously compelling, River Town is an unforgettable portrait of a city that is seeking to understand both what it was and what it someday will be. “This touching memoir of an American dropped into the center of China transcends the boundaries of the travel genre and will appeal to anyone wanting to learn more about the heart and soul of the Chinese people. Highly recommended.” —Library Journal “This is a colorful memoir from a Peace Corps volunteer who came away with more understanding of the Chinese than any foreign traveler has a right to expect.” —Booklist

Daring to Drive

Author: Manal Sharif
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1476793026
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 304

Book Description
A memoir by a Saudi Arabian woman who became the unexpected leader of a movement to support women's rights describes how fundamentalism influenced her radical religious beliefs until her education, a job, and legal contradictions changed her perspectives.

The Buried

Author: Peter Hessler
Publisher: Text Publishing
ISBN: 1925774554
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 480

Book Description
An intimate account of the Arab Spring, and Egypt’s past and present, seen through the eyes of a wide range of Egyptians: political operators, archaeologists and garbage collectors; women, the queer community and migrants.

Blue Highways

Author: William Least Heat-Moon
Publisher: Little, Brown
ISBN: 0316218545
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 458

Book Description
Hailed as a masterpiece of American travel writing, Blue Highways is an unforgettable journey along our nation's backroads. William Least Heat-Moon set out with little more than the need to put home behind him and a sense of curiosity about "those little towns that get on the map -- if they get on at all -- only because some cartographer has a blank space to fill: Remote, Oregon; Simplicity, Virginia; New Freedom, Pennsylvania; New Hope, Tennessee; Why, Arizona; Whynot, Mississippi." His adventures, his discoveries, and his recollections of the extraordinary people he encountered along the way amount to a revelation of the true American experience.

Global Productivity

Author: Alistair Dieppe
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 1464816093
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 552

Book Description
The COVID-19 pandemic struck the global economy after a decade that featured a broad-based slowdown in productivity growth. Global Productivity: Trends, Drivers, and Policies presents the first comprehensive analysis of the evolution and drivers of productivity growth, examines the effects of COVID-19 on productivity, and discusses a wide range of policies needed to rekindle productivity growth. The book also provides a far-reaching data set of multiple measures of productivity for up to 164 advanced economies and emerging market and developing economies, and it introduces a new sectoral database of productivity. The World Bank has created an extraordinary book on productivity, covering a large group of countries and using a wide variety of data sources. There is an emphasis on emerging and developing economies, whereas the prior literature has concentrated on developed economies. The book seeks to understand growth patterns and quantify the role of (among other things) the reallocation of factors, technological change, and the impact of natural disasters, including the COVID-19 pandemic. This book is must-reading for specialists in emerging economies but also provides deep insights for anyone interested in economic growth and productivity. Martin Neil Baily Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution Former Chair, U.S. President’s Council of Economic Advisers This is an important book at a critical time. As the book notes, global productivity growth had already been slowing prior to the COVID-19 pandemic and collapses with the pandemic. If we want an effective recovery, we have to understand what was driving these long-run trends. The book presents a novel global approach to examining the levels, growth rates, and drivers of productivity growth. For anyone wanting to understand or influence productivity growth, this is an essential read. Nicholas Bloom William D. Eberle Professor of Economics, Stanford University The COVID-19 pandemic hit a global economy that was already struggling with an adverse pre-existing condition—slow productivity growth. This extraordinarily valuable and timely book brings considerable new evidence that shows the broad-based, long-standing nature of the slowdown. It is comprehensive, with an exceptional focus on emerging market and developing economies. Importantly, it shows how severe disasters (of which COVID-19 is just the latest) typically harm productivity. There are no silver bullets, but the book suggests sensible strategies to improve growth prospects. John Fernald Schroders Chaired Professor of European Competitiveness and Reform and Professor of Economics, INSEAD

Flow Chart

Author: John Ashbery
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1480459097
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 343

Book Description
A quintessentially American epic poem that rewrites all the rules of epic poetry—starting with the one that says epic poetry can’t be about the writing of epic poetry itself The appearance of Flow Chart in 1991 marked the kickoff of a remarkably prolific period in John Ashbery’s long career, a decade during which he published seven all-new books of poetry as well as a collected series of lectures on poetic form and practice. So it comes as no surprise that this book-length poem—one of the longest ever written by an American poet—reads like a rocket launch: charged, propulsive, mesmerizing, a series of careful explosions that, together, create a radical forward motion. It’s been said that Flow Chart was written in response to a dare of sorts: Artist and friend Trevor Winkfield suggested that Ashbery write a poem of exactly one hundred pages, a challenge that Ashbery took up with plans to complete the poem in one hundred days. But the celebrated work that ultimately emerged from its squared-off origin story was one that the poet himself called “a continuum, a diary.” In six connected, constantly surprising movements of free verse—with the famous “sunflower” double sestina thrown in, just to reinforce the poem’s own multivarious logic—Ashbery’s poem maps a path through modern American consciousness with all its attendant noise, clamor, and signal: “Words, however, are not the culprit. They are at worst a placebo, / leading nowhere (though nowhere, it must be added, can sometimes be a cozy / place, preferable in many cases to somewhere).”

Driving While Black: African American Travel and the Road to Civil Rights

Author: Gretchen Sorin
Publisher: Liveright Publishing
ISBN: 1631495704
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 332

Book Description
Bloomberg • Best Nonfiction Books of 2020: "[A] tour de force." The basis of a major PBS documentary by Ric Burns, this “excellent history” (The New Yorker) reveals how the automobile fundamentally changed African American life. Driving While Black demonstrates that the car—the ultimate symbol of independence and possibility—has always held particular importance for African Americans, allowing black families to evade the dangers presented by an entrenched racist society and to enjoy, in some measure, the freedom of the open road. Melding new archival research with her family’s story, Gretchen Sorin recovers a lost history, demonstrating how, when combined with black travel guides—including the famous Green Book—the automobile encouraged a new way of resisting oppression.

Ford Model T Coast to Coast

Author: Tom Cotter
Publisher: Quarto Publishing Group USA
ISBN: 0760364648
Category : Transportation
Languages : en
Pages : 227

Book Description
Driverless cars are on the horizon, but before the world falls asleep in the driver’s seat, let’s take a look back down the road from whence we have come. Ford Model-T Coast-to-Coast, documents the cross-country adventure of two brave drivers as they pilot a century-old Model-T on a 3,000-mile journey from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Coast. The book is as much a contemplation of early-20th century American life as it is a fond farewell to the automotive age. Can the car still be the vehicle of freedom and discovery, when we’re no longer in command? Or will we finally be able to fully appreciate the scenery rushing past? Accompanied by Michael Alan Ross’ evocative photography, author Tom Cotter stops in small towns, meets local people and hears their stories about cars, travel, and life. Cotter and Ross also explore back roads adjacent to his main route, the Lincoln Highway—the first transcontinental road. Significant cross-country runs, such as those by speed-record setter Cannonball Baker, and literary adventurers such as Jack Kerourac, John Steinbeck and Bill Bryson are considered in light of the driverless future. Cotter also drives some of the same roads that a young Edsel Ford traveled in his father’s Model T upon high school graduation in 1917. In addition to the central road trip, Cotter also visits interesting automotive and transport museums as well as “keepers of the flame” such as Model-T clubs, mechanics, junkyards and collectors across the country. He also records the numerous trials and tribulations in keeping a 100-year-old car operating on a 3,000-mile journey, something the driverless car of the future is unlikely to encounter. Join Cotter on his "slow drive across a fast country." You'll be glad you did.

Driving the Silk Road

Author: DOUGLAS. MCWILLIAMS
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781912892716
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Have you ever imagined what it might be like to take a fairly standard luxury saloon, designed to take ministers and tycoons about their business, across the Gobi Desert in the notoriously hard 'Peking to Paris' endurance rally?

Iep Jaltok

Author: Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 0816534020
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 91

Book Description
"Iep jāltok is a collection of poetry by a young Marshallese woman highlighting the traumas of her people through colonialism, racism, forced migration, the legacy of nuclear testing by America, and the impending threats of climate change"--Provided by publisher.